The Dutch Observatory

Finally!!   We had some “fantastic” seeing today compared to the conditions of the last many months.  I can’t remember any more when it was this nice.  The 150+ mile/hour winds of the jetstream above had moved around Atlanta and except for an occasional blurp, the image was steady.  With these conditions I had to try out an old barlow, a 3x Klee which let me image at f 38.  Something I have never done before, and which would have made some bad images in the very unstable conditions we’ve had.  The image shows clouds in Elysium, clouds at the morning limb and a streak of clouds south of the NPC.

It’s been a long time since we had half way decent conditions.  Tonight’s transparency was a little over average, but seeing was still low because if high winds.  Here my image of Mars from today. Clouds visible over Utopia, Arabia and at the evening limb. 

We had some “clear” skies after yesterday’s rain, but the next front was moving in fast. I managed to get a few images while some thin layers of clouds passed through. Seeing was fair but very humid and freezing. After three runs, my corrector plate started to freeze over and I had to stop before the clouds moved in again.  For this image I replaced the Celestron Shorty plus barlow with the cell of the Meade 140 2x barlow with an 4″ extention.

Yesterday I also ran some imaging tests.  I should have done this a lot earlier, but better late than never .  I used the Williams Optics which I have used a lot lately and replaced the Celestron Shorty which produces pretty weak images with the Meade 140 2x.   I used this barlow almost 2 years ago to run some tests on Jupiter and I was pleased with the results.  However, the tests than were made with a borrowed barlow and I was not able to find one to purchase.  I now have acquired one and shown are some test results.  The 4 images are made with the CPC925 on a wedge, the DMK21AU04.AS and the Meade 140 2x barlow and the WO 2x barlow on extention rings of variable lenght as noted.  It shows that not only this is a good barlow for me for Jupiter as in last year’s tests, but also for Mars.

Mars, the evening before opposition.  It does not look like the conditions will allow to image tomorrow when Mars is at opposition, so here is Mars one day before.  The conditions were variable with high clouds passing through as well as an  occasional Con-trail from the planes leaving Atlanta airport.  The CM is almost the same as yesterday and the images have been made again with the Meade 140 with some extra rings added.  As always, click the thumbnail for the larger image.

Today Mars is at his closest approach to Earth, just 62 million miles away!  In two days, Mars will be at opposition to earth, which means the sun is exactly opposite of Mars.  It was not too cold outside so I also decided to make an animation of one hour rotation, and captured an image every 10 minutes for one hour.  Clouds are seen over Tempe, Arcadia and Ganges/Candor and Olympus Mons and the morning limb.  Click the thumbnail for the animation to start.  These images have been made using a Meade 140 2x barlow on extention rings and I believe it does a lot better than the Celestron Shorty plus.

Last night the seeing and transparency was probably the best this winter so far and well above average, until clouds started moving in shortly after midnight.  A nice cloud over Elisia Mons and a wide cloud band streches from Mere Insula over the north tip of Syrtis Major, over Isidis Regio and way beyond Hesperia.

The winds calmed down a bit, but it still was bitter cold.  Not as cold as Joel, but 18-19 degrees is cold enough to numb my fingers.   Here an image from last night/early this morning.  It was difficult to control my scope with the handcontroller.  It looked like it did nto want to move or the backlash was set to “very long”.  I am sure I could have done better, but my fingers did not want to cooperate in the cold….

This is my first image of Mars this year.  The temperature was 21 degrees Fahrenheit with windgusts up to 19 miles an hour.  However in between the gusts there were some quiet times where the image did not move too much.  By the time i came back inside, i thought my thumb was frozen off.    Transparency was average with seeing below normal.  I made two images one with the WO barlow and the other with the Celestron Shorty Plus.  Here the image with the WO barlow which produces better contrast than the Shorty.

The forecast was average, but the clouds started to move in already as we were imaging the sun in the afternoon at CE.  When I got out at midnight, the blue moon had a hugh halo caused by a thin (?) cloud cover.  I could faintly see the stars of the constellation Leo.  Since this was the last opportunity to image Mars in 2009 for me, I gave it a shot anyway despite the bad conditions.  I was able to make two series with each filter, but when I finished I could not even see Regulus anymore.  Here the best of the two, and my last image of 2009.  BTW this image is also stacked with Emil’s software.